Thursday, May 26, 2011

The NDP All-Star Team of... Whozthat again?

That's a grand total of 43 critics for 39 ministers. The six you see highlighted there are all people who technically fall under one heading - Human Resources and Skills Development - but are instead broken down into several portfolios.

This could mean either that a) the NDP really needed to give some of these people something to do, or b) they're signalling their priorities by giving several random, unknown faces portfolios that one big standard-bearer could take but has decided not to. I'm going with a combination of both.

Now, answer me this: is it a demotion to go from Finance critic to House Leader? After all, it's not a very glamorous or well-known job with lots of media time, and we all know Mulcair is an absolute camera-seeking personality. Or is he there because he has to wrangle up all those neophyte Quebeckers?

Also, what gives with Fin Donnelly at Fisheries and Oceans? They guy is from New Westminster... Ryan Cleary wasn't doing anything? What about one of those Cote Nord MPs? You have a good bunch of them you know.... whatever.

Also, did Linda Duncan also get demoted? From the big Environment portfolio to Aboriginal Affairs? That one doesn't even make sense when you look at it. Perfect person would've been Romeo Saganash, but for some reason he's at Natural Resources... again, whatever.

I also noticed that some of those Dippers who voted against the long-gun registry are no longer critics, including the biggies Niki Ashton, Dennis Bevington, and John Rafferty. In fact, there's little mention of the Northern Ontario MPs... hm. Interesting, interesting, interesting.